The Wit and Humor of Barack Obama.

Okay, I raised the subject of Obama's humorlessness. "I have no response to that" was all he said about that New Yorker cover, and I speculated that he could have laughed. Then I frontpaged a comment — made by my younger son — that read: "He's always been dead serious about everything. Has he ever said anything funny?"

But let's be fair. David — also in those comments — came up with the first example of Obama humor: "You're likable enough, Hillary." I agree that was humor. I note too that it was directed at his opponent, sounded rather mean, and ended up hurting him.

An emailer reminded me of this post of mine from back in January:

I'm not declaring favorites in the presidential campaign, but I've got to say that stuff like this makes me love Obama, at least on a personal level:

Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night's debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork - something his opponents have since used to suggest he's not up to managing the country. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.

"Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, 'What's your biggest weakness?'" Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School. "If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, 'Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible.'"

Now, that was good.

So we could write a book called "The Wit and Humor of Barack Obama." But how thick would it be? You know, there was a book called "The Wit and Humor of Richard Nixon." Here's a Time Magazine article about it from 1969:

To many, the fact that Nixon has even a mild sense of humor comes as a surprise. And, in fact, the President did come by the gift of laughter, in public anyway, rather late in life. Perhaps because he felt he had to counterbalance his youth with seriousness for so many years—he was, at 39, the second youngest U.S. Vice President in history—Nixon was until last year the paradigm of sobriety. Then, at about the same time that people started talking about the new Nixon, he began sprinkling his speeches with one-liners.

Few, to be sure, were exactly memorable. "I'm trying to graduate from college myself this fall," Nixon would tell college audiences. "The Electoral College." A few were execrable. "It's one thing to give 'em hell," he said after Hubert Humphrey had made a well-publicized visit to Harry Truman. "It's another to give them Hubert." A new paperback, The Wit & Humor of Richard Nixon is necessarily brief (128 pages), has more than the usual amount of white space and includes Nixon's entire acceptance speech at Miami Beach, which contained not a scintilla of wit.

Some Nixon jokes, however, are genuinely funny. Talking to Virginia Republicans, he gently needled both a local G.O.P. official and himself. While he was preparing the itinerary for his South American trip in 1958, Nixon told how the official, Lee Potter, had noticed one omission. "Why don't you take in Caracas?" Potter had suggested. "It's a fun town." Said Nixon: "It sure was. I got stoned there."

IN THE COMMENTS: Mister Snitch says:

Obama has gotten less spontaneous and genuine (and 'funny') as he has gotten closer to the possibility of being elected. Note also some of the outrageous gaffes, truly worthy of a Dan Quayle or ANY verbal goof Bush might have ever made. He's cracking under the pressure, and it's not going to get any easier from here.

Geez, this was a NEW YORKER cartoon. The thing to say, to ingratiate himself to millions of middle-class Americans, was this: "You know, I never did get those New Yorker cartoons".

Even the New Yorker staff would have appreciated the gibe. And it would all be behind him by now. And us.

It is really hard for him to risk a joke now, but I love that line. We know it resonates: There's a "Seinfeld" episode on the subject:

Elaine: Look at this cartoon in the New Yorker, I don't get this.

Jerry: I don't either.

Elaine: And you're on the fringe of the humor business.

George: Hey!

Elaine: Hey! George look at this.

George: That's cute.

Elaine: You got it?

George: No, never mind.

Elaine: Come on, we're two intelligent people here. We can figure this out. Now we got a dog and a cat in an office.

Jerry: It looks like my accountant's office but there's no pets working there.

Elaine: The cat is saying, "I've enjoyed reading your E-mail."

George: Maybe it's got something to do with that 42 in the corner.

Elaine: It's a page number.

***

[The New Yorker cartoon editor] Mr. Elinoff: Oh! yeah... That's a rather clever jab at inter-office politics, don't you think?

Elaine: Ah, ah... yeah... uh but, why is it that the, that the animals enjoy reading the email?

Mr. Elinoff: Well Miss Benes. Cartoons are like gossamer and one doesn't dissect gossamer... heh... hemm...

Elaine: Well you don't have to dissect if you can just tell me. Why this is suppose to be funny?

Mr. Elinoff: Ha! It's merely a commentary on contemporary mores.er)

Elaine: But, what is the comment?

Mr. Elinoff: It's a slice of life.

Elaine: No it isn't.

Mr. Elinoff: Pun?

Elaine: I don't think so.

Mr Elinoff: Vorshtein?

Elaine: That's not a word.... You have no idea what this means do you?

Mr Elinoff: No.

Elaine: Then why did you print it?

Mr. Elinoff: I liked the kitty.

My to-do list.

1. Write more lists. People love to read lists.

2. ...

"If I can turn the focus on the Beatles on to Christ's message, then that's what we're here to do."

Said John Lennon — in a newly discovered interview from 1969. He was asked about saying that the Beatles had gotten bigger than Jesus Christ:

“It’s just an expression, meaning the Beatles seem to me to have more influence over youth than Christ,” he said.

“Now I wasn’t saying that was a good idea, ’cos I’m one of Christ’s biggest fans. And if I can turn the focus on the Beatles on to Christ’s message, then that’s what we are here to do.”...

“If the Beatles get on the side of Christ, which they always were, and let people know that, then maybe the churches won’t be full, but there’ll be a lot of Christians dancing in the dance halls,” he said....

“Whatever they celebrate, God and Christ, I don’t think it matters as long as they’re aware of him and his message.”

Lennon... said his dislike of institutional religion had been shaped as a 14-year-old when a “ludicrous” vicar banned him from church after he and his friends were “having the giggles”.

He added: “I wasn’t convinced of the vicar’s sincerity anyway.”

So "Imagine no religion" really means: Imagine life without that humorless vicar.

"I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis..."

"... which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago."

Writes Kurt Vonnegut, in an excellent and short essay on writing style. He's got 7 rules:

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

Great rules for bloggers, obviously. In fact, these are rules that seem to say: A great way to write is to blog.

Via Metafilter, where the commenters keep it simple, and somebody links to this cool article on semicolons, which includes the Vonnegut quote:

If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

Anyway, as Hazel Crosby once said: "Nobody has to be ashamed of being a Hoosier... Hoosiers do all right. Lowe and I have been around the world twice, and everywhere we went we found Hoosiers in charge of everything.... Lincoln was a Hoosier, too. He grew up in Spencer County.... I don't know what it is about Hoosiers... but they've sure got something. If somebody was to make a list, they'd be amazed... We Hoosiers got to stick together... Whenever I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, 'You call me Mom.'"

Is Obama "trying to deflect attention from his own poor surge judgment"...

"... by bringing along as a lightning rod someone whose judgment was even worse than his?"

Mickey Kaus on Obama's decision to bring Chuck Hagel with him to Iraq.

Everybody's talking about The New Yorker... and balls!

The power of cartoons! After devoting an hour to updating my post on the Barry Blitt cover, I go over to Memeorandum to see what else people are blogging about right now, and I see that everybody's talking about that New Yorker cover. I'm actually going to get around to reading that long, apparently well-researched article inside the magazine, the one about whatever it is Barack Obama did to rise to power inside that political mystery that is Chicago, but — as Art Spiegelman once said —

Comics "go directly to the id.''

Kick us in the id and we cry out instantly. It will take us a while to do the background reading. Meanwhile, we bloggers will do the foreground writing.

Here's Michelle Malkin, reacting to Obama's reaction: "Grow a pair, Obama."

And Kevin Drum is all at first I thought it was kinda funny....

But at the risk of seeming humorless, that reaction didn't last too long. Maybe it's because this kind of satire just doesn't work, no matter how well it's done. But mostly it's because a few minutes thought convinced me it was gutless. If artist Barry Blitt had some real cojones...

What is this fascination with balls? Jesse Jackson wants to cut Obama's, which presumes their existence. Michelle Malkin thinks they don't exist. Kevin Drum thinks they don't exist on Blitt — they've been oblitterated — though they may somehow exist in fake — or un-Spanish — form. But if Blitt had had real cojones...

... he would have drawn the same cover but shown it as a gigantic word bubble coming out of John McCain's mouth — implying, you see, that this is how McCain wants the world to view Obama. But he didn't. Because that would have been unfair.

Uh... no... because it would have been absurdly cluttered, stupid looking, and hard to draw. Not to mention clunkily literal and no fun at all. Blitt lacks balls because he assumes we have brains?

Drum speculates about what would have happened if his dopey mouth-bubble idea had appeared as a New Yorker cover:

And McCain would have complained about it. And for some reason, the risk that a failed satire would unfairly defame McCain is somehow seen as worse than the risk that a failed satire would unfairly defame Obama.

So: gutless. And whatever else you can say about it, good satire is never gutless.

It's gutless because Obama and not McCain was the one to get mad? Why does Drum even think that makes sense? Surely, The New Yorker's readers overwhelmingly favor Obama. To offend McCain would be stroking their id.

All I can think is that Drum feels threatened by McCain's anger and unthreatened by Obama's anger. Is he still talking about balls?

So here's the new New Yorker cover.

Get it?

Obama says:

"I have no response to that."

The campaign adds:

The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive.

And we agree.

The artist is Barry Blitt, and I have to say that I think the cover is a hilarious spoof of the fears and lies about Obama. Michelle and Barack are in the Oval Office, doing a celebratory fist bump. There's an Osama Bin Laden portrait on the wall and a burning flag in the fireplace. He's a Muslim and she's a revolutionary. Of course, Obama has to push it aside and can scarcely laugh about it.

Or, maybe, I don't know... maybe it would work to laugh. He's been awfully uptight about things lately. And laughing conveys the instant recognition that it's absurd. Why be surly about it? McCain's supposed to be the cranky guy...

IN THE COMMENTS: ricpic says:

Fears and lies my foot!

The dead on truth about these two America haters.

Congrats Blitt.

And congrats to the Hillary camp inside The New Yorker.

It's that last line that's making me frontpage this.

ADDED: Taylor Marsh asks whether The New Yorker would treat John McCain the same way:

Picture a drawing showing a very old man in a wheelchair, his hospital gown adorned with medals... babe of a wife pushing him, as his first wife wipes drool off of McCain's mouth... while Cindy McCain stops to open packages from Chanel. No, I didn't think so either.

Wait. Who's the "babe of a wife" if not Cindy? I don't get the specifics, but I see the point. I think it would be out of bounds because it would be so unappealing. The New Yorker doesn't put drooling disabled persons on the cover. And the Michelle and Barack image has a transgressive, radical chic edge to it, that I suspect excites the magazine's audience.

IN THE COMMENTS: Christopher Althouse Cohen said (about Obama):

He's always been dead serious about everything. Has he ever said anything funny?

Perhaps not. Did you notice how unamused he looked in that interview in which his daughters were so lighthearted? Remember when he got pissy about Maureen Dowd saying that his ears stick out? ("I just want to put you on notice... I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.") His supporters may picture him bringing a youthful spirit into the White House, but look at him. He's actually quite stodgy and censorious. Turn off that television.

Now, this will constitute the "turning the page" that people seem to want so badly, since George Bush likes to joke around. The George Bush page was pushing the envelope. (Is that a mixed metaphor?) I still can't get my mind around the picture of him saying "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" and then "punch[ing] the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock."

Victoria writes:

[Obama] doesn't poke fun at himself, doesn't use a light touch in his speeches, doesn't seem relaxed at the podium EVER.

It's gotten so that I wonder how he will acquit himself at the annual Smith Dinner....

I can't imagine, simply cannot for a second imagine Obama making fun of his background, his race, or mention his pastor and his rants during the Al Smith dinner.

What a dour, touchy time we will have, if he's elected.

Blake said:

Nah. He'll be the Margaret Dumont to our Marx Brothers.

He'll have a terrible time, tho'.

Good point! He'll be great fun for the comedians. He's a perfect straight man.

Paco Wové said:

When I saw it, I rolled my eyes and thought, Oh, God, it's the New Yorker trying to be all transgressive again....

Oh, yeah, remember all the mileage they got out of this:



From an interview with Spiegelman:

Q: [O]nyour controversial 1993 Valentine's Day New Yorker cover in which, during the conflict between Hasidim and African Americans in Brooklyn, you portray a Hasidic man and a black woman embracing. Values and worlds colliding, meeting.

AS: It didn't come as a shock to me that this got people to sit up and take notice. I'm interested in visual signs...

Q: How does that apply to the New Yorker cover?

AS: The signs are highly recognizable. The sign for Hasid is clear and unavoidable, without the usual anti-Semitic physiognomy that goes with it. The sign for African-American woman is equally unavoidable, without entering into Aunt Jemima stereotypes or anything of the kind. Then there's this other sign that has to do with the Valentine's Card-the kiss, the field of red with the lacy decoration around it, all of it weaving together separate meanings. The irony is you have these two groups that are at each other's throats at each other's lips instead. That's supposed to conjure up carnality and yet Valentine's Day, the image of Valentine's Day, isn't about carnality but a kind of benign romantic love. All those things course through this image and the impossibility of it is what's so entertaining for me. What got people most upset that week was not other magazines with the usual S&M imagery-chains and whips, leather and hurt-but something quite benign on the surface, playing with signs. Reverend Dougherty, a representative of the black community in Crown Heights, was very upset I used a black woman: one more time, he said, a white man was oppressing a black woman. Why didn't I have a black man and a Hasidic woman, he asked on the radio. Maybe he's a good reverend, I don't know, but he's a rotten art director. A Hasidic man is a lot easier to recognize than a woman with a handkerchief on her head. In terms of visual signs you've got one thing that works and one thing that doesn't. Even more important, I answered him, if I had used a black man and Hasidic woman, you'd be complaining I was once again showing the black man as a rapist and defiler of white woman. This shows me the problem has nothing to do with the signs being shown but the reverberation of those signs in people's heads. The same thing happened in op-ed articles. There was an op-ed in the New York Times in which a woman who was very upset about the New Yorker cover writes about the Jew's lascivious lips. Another person, equally upset in the Washington Post, described the Jew's prim lips. Now you know I can't draw lips that are simultaneously lascivious and prim; I'm limited.

Q: Sure you can.

AS: I did. I just drew lips.

Speaking of reading the signs, and back to the comments, George says:

He's wearing a dress.

She's in pants.

And if you hold the cover up to a mirror, it reads 'Rekroy Wen' which means "Kill Whitey" in Tshivenda, the language of Barack's homeland.

The cover date "July 21" is the anniversary of the founding the KIPRP, the Kenyan Islamic People's Revolutionary Party.

He's also crushing the throat of a bald eagle.

Wake up, America!!

The gold and purple river.

(Enlarge: 1, 2.)

Sculpture in the grass.

Thai...



... with fly.

Another entry in my continuing series: Men in shorts.

So... maybe he's an actor, playing a child, and this is his costume. I really don't know. But do you see my point?

And don't tell me the weather is hot, because: 1. He's wearing long sleeves, and 2. The temperature was about 72° at the time.

How it feels to have a stroke: "my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a 'being at one' with the universe..."

Wow! You've got to listen to this phenomenal episode of "Fresh Air," with Jill Bolte Taylor, the brain scientist who observed her own stroke and came through it all to tell the tale. Here's her book, "My Stroke of Insight."

The interview refers to a great YouTube clip that supposedly lots of people have seen, but I hadn't, so maybe you haven't. Here is is:



There's also a nice, long passage from the book at the "Fresh Air" link. Excerpt:

The harder I tried to concentrate, the more fleeting my ideas seemed to be. Instead of finding answers and information, I met a growing sense of peace. As the language centers in my left hemisphere grew increasingly silent, my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a "being at one" with the universe, if you will. In a compelling sort of way, it felt like the good road home and I liked it....

IN THE COMMENTS: Some serious questions about Taylor's brain science shake my faith in NPR.

Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline.

It's the new Pitt-Jolies!

What's with the names? They gave a new idea for a girl's name: Camille Leon. But no, the boy got the Leon middle, and the girl got Marcheline. Marcheline is Angelina Jolie's mother's name, a fancification of her original name Marcia Lynne. Pitt's parents names were Jane Etta and William Alvin so there's no parental content in Knox Leon. It seems as though Jolie has some notion that boys' names ought to have the letter X in them — as her 2 other boys are Maddox and Pax. Just think of all the names they must have rejected before they hit Knox. Rex... it's a dog's name. Lex... no, Lex Luthor. Max... way too common. Tax... come on, give it a chance: It goes with Brad! Think about it!

By the way, I love Brad Pitt. "Focus! Focus! Focus! Remember the plan! I did my part!"

A golden refection.

(The unreflected image is here.)

"I’m disgusted with him."

Lefty Obama supporters displeased. He's — oh no! — a politician... but he was supposed to be different... blah blah blah...

Were the swooning Obama supporters of yore really in love with him, or were they in love with the idea of themselves in love with loving him? They're remembering how beautiful they were back then, when it looked like this:



"Yes We Can"... but, no, we can't even recapture the feeling of the past that was only a few months ago. It's nostalgia now.

Of course, he's a politican. Time to participate in reality. It's beautiful too.

McCain: "Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge."

Incredible how important Drudge has become. That's from an interview by Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper. (Here's the article on the interview, with audio clips in the sidebar.)

Q: What websites if any do you look at regularly?

Mr. McCain: Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics, sometimes.

He must mean Real Clear Politics.

On blogs:

... I understand the impact of blogs on American politics today and political campaigns. I understand that. And I understand that something appears on one blog, can ricochet all around and get into the evening news, the front page of The New York Times. So, I do pay attention to the blogs. And I am not in any way unappreciative of the impact that they have on entire campaigns and world opinion.

Q: You read newspapers then.

That's almost wistful, isn't it? Newspapers get a mention and the NYT reporter pipes up with "You read newspapers then."

Mr. McCain: I read them most all every day.

Q: You and Obama are both newspaper and book readers. Do you read them in the old paper version or do you read them online?

"The old paper version" — it almost sounds as though the reporters themselves are letting go of the newspaper newspaper.

Mr. McCain: I love to read them in the print form, and the reason why I do is because so much, the prominence of the story matters. If I read a story and say, Oh my God, did you see this? But it’s back on A26, it doesn’t have the impact of what are still – even though it’s declining – what are still, what are hundreds of millions of American picking up an looking at today....

I'm picturing Richard Nixon taking comfort in the New York Times publishing the story of the Watergate break-in on — what was it? — page 19?

Anyway, these days, that story on A26 will be moved to the front by Drudge — which all you newspaper reporters are checking too — and, Drudge or no Drudge, blogger swill bloggers will see any story the newspapers try to downplay, and if it's good, we'll churn it up until the newspapers have to write a story about how all the bloggers are writing about it.

Are "hundreds of millions of Americans" are picking up the newspaper newspaper? The NYT circulation is around one million. USA Today and the Wall Street Journal each have about 2 million. How many Americans get a newspaper? I don't know, but "everybody watches... Drudge."

"Watches"... is that why we love the web? We watch it, like TV.

Watch Matt himself say what his standard the Drudge Report is: "To be completely live, almost as if you're animated, with text":



Hey, Drudge is a strange guy, isn't it? It's hardly surprising that he rarely goes on TV. Yet this oddball leads the way for us, which makes us all pretty strange, don't you think? It must drive Nagourney and Cooper mad.

IN THE COMMENTS: 1jpb writes: "Does [McCain] know that religious conservatives (and non-conservatives) will quickly notice, and object to, his use of the word God?" Good question. I know it's very common among many Americans to blurt out "oh my God" carelessly and for almost no reason at all, but there are also many of us who think it is quite wrong. I, personally, think it's worse than blurting out "fuck" and I don't understand why anyone who has any respect for the 10 Commandments doesn't agree with me. If you're not in a situation where you can spice up your loose talk with "fuck," please don't say "oh my God."

Obama chides Bernie Mac.

Poor Barack Obama! It's another with-friends-like-that-who-needs-enemies-story:

[C]omedian Bernie Mac after an appearance at an Obama fundraiser last night. The comic performed a profanity-laced set at the function which ended with hecklers telling him to get off the stage after a joke that some deemed particularly offensive to women. Obama joked about the fundraiser being a “family affair” when he followed Mac on stage, but the campaign got more serious about criticizing the comedian afterwards:

Toward the end of a 10-minute standup routine at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Chicago, the 50-year-old star of “The Bernie Mac Show” joked about menopause, sexual infidelity and promiscuity, and used occasional crude language.

“My little nephew came to me and he said, ‘Uncle, what’s the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question?’” Mac said. “I said, I don’t know, but I said, ‘Go upstairs and ask your mother if she’d make love to the mailman for $50,000.’”

As the joke continued, the punchline evoked an angry response from at least one person in the audience, who said it was offensive to women.

How did it get more offensive? The Chicago Tribune gives a little more detail:

He promised to help Obama and ended his irreverent riff with a joke involving the women in the families and living with two “hoes.”

That summary comes from Ed Morrissey, who calls attention to the offense to women that Obama's "family affair" scolding misses. To say, this is a "family affair" implies that we could talk like this in an adults-only environment — as if there's no difference between sex and sexism. Ed notes that it's particularly bad when Obama needs to win over Hillary-supporters.

Firedoglake attempts humor with heavy-handed sarcasm:

This is potentially game changing. Who would ever have expected such stuff from Bernie Mac? At any rate I don't see how Obama can possibly win in November in the aftermath of this catastrophe.

Oops. You stepped in it. If such talk from Mac was completely predictable, then the Obama campaign is responsible for it. Once again, I've got to say: With friends like this, who needs enemies?

UPDATE: What exactly was the "ho" joke? (Important, considering what happened to Imus.) Jack Tapper has it:

Mac's wife, in the joke, said she sleep "with anyone" for $50,000, and Mac's daughter said the same.

Explained Mac: "Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000. But realistically speaking we live with two hos."

So the same week that Obama agonized over letting his daughters do a cute little TV interview, Mac is calling his own daughter a "ho."

And according to my commenter EnigmatiCore, Andrew Dice Clay told the same joke in the 1980s.